Hell Yeah!

Comfortably Numb

Local Woman Among Dead screams the blood-red bordered front page of the Times Heral Record today. A 19 year old Minisink girl was among the victims of gunman Cho Seung-Hui, a man the paper has inexplicably decided to refer to by his first name.

A "Killer Profile" piece offerss a peek into "Cho's" demented young mind. HIs creative writings were filled with twisted violence, it says, causing alarm among his professors and fellow students. It then brings up the subject of this posting with the sentence: "News reports said that he may have been taking medication for depression and have been becoming increasingly violent and erratic."

The last couple decades have been breakthrough years for research into psychoactive pharmaceuticals. You've seen the commercials on TV that offer sunny green fields to replace your rainy-day mind. Ask your doctor if <insert drug here> is right for you. The sped-up voiceover rattles off an aurally invisible list of horrifying side-effects that you'd shudder at if they were presented comprehensibly. Then back to the green fields and out.

These are a category of wonder drugs. Amazing alchemist's concoctions that offer relief to real people who suffer real depression and really need help. Little understood, extremely powerful and wildly overused, these drugs have created a whole new societal issue to replace the problem of individuals suffering clinical depression. A few of these depressed people seem to lose connection with that magical evolutionary gift of compassion, and then lose connection with the reality they and others live in, and their lives seem to take on a violent video game surreality that involves real guns and dozens of real-live dead people. The catch is, the hero can not win this game, and his last man almost always dies by his own hand.

I'd always speculated that pharmaceutical-addled mass muderers like Harris and Kliebold in Columbine had some sort of mental breakthrough in their last moments during which they realized or understood the incredible horror of what they'd done, and in an overwhelming rush of realization, killed themselves.

But I am now convinced that I was wrong.

The time that passed between parts 1 and 2 of the Virginia Tech atrocity was long enough for "Cho" to contemplate what he'd done, decide he wanted more, insert another quarter in the game and start playing again.

And maybe when he realized he was 1) running out of ammo and 2) a dead man as soon as the first cop arrived, that there was no way he could win. And maybe he thought that somehow, after this game was over (by his own hand), another quarter would buy him another play.

It makes me think about Columbine, and the many other anti-depressant-related horrors (read some here). Maybe we have been plain old dumb-lucky that these guys weren't carrying 10,000 rounds, because the sense-of-morality check that's in place in a "normal" mind simply isn't there anymore in someone whose mind has been sufficiently altered by one of these wonder drugs.

We live in a society that's changed from "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" to "let me write you up for this new anti-depressant. Take it for a month and call me, or call me if you feel any side effects". Of course, one whose mind is profoundly altered is not one who can reasonably assess his side effects from the perspective of normalcy. One seems to reach for a rifle instead.

Doctors are being evermore squeezed for productivity by insurers. They are offered "low-maintenance cures" for common ailments like depression. A 5 foot tall woman receives the same dose of an antidepressant as a 340lb linebacker. They're both told to experiment on themselves with dosages without having any measure against which to judge results.

It took years for the FDA to get "suicide" listed as a side effect on one drugs' insert.

A Scientology front organization called the Citizens Commission on Human Rights demands data on "Cho's" depression drug history - they make the connection that others seem not to.

But I don't blame the pharma companies. It's their job to develop and sell drugs of all kinds. And this class of drug is a wonder drug, though I would never in a million years permit a member of my family to take one for any reason. But we were cursed with a cultural disadvantage: being good Irish stock, we will doggedly suffer anything until our antagonist dies, or we die of cirrhosis!

My finger points straight at the doctors who prescribe incredibly powerful drugs, with a profoundly deep reach, as though they are no more powerful than aspirin, and rate about as much follow-up observation. It's a time when a doctor will put a 5 year old child on chronic meds for ADHD at the request of a bleary-eyed overworked, under-siege kindergarten teacher. Doctors whose sum total knowledge of these drugs is a one-sheet from the pharma. The insert, clinical trial data and studies go unread.

The villain in this story is the doctor who wrote the Rx for "Cho", then cut "Cho" loose, expecting "Cho" to somehow be sane and courageous enough to tell him he was feeling violent and erratic for the months leading up to critical mass.

Let "Cho", Harris, Kliebold and the hundreds (or thousands) of murders and suicides perpetrated by people on these drugs be a warning to every doctor who writes a scrip for one of these drugs: you break it, you bought it.

Blame the bottle.

I can't top this, so read it yourself! Hell YEAH!

Neddie Jingo!

Good Simpleton

Today I think of Brother Francis from A Canticle for Liebowitz. He thrives and achieves greatness during a snail-paced life rife with futility, only be eaten by highwaymen who put an arrow between his eyes.

A bus can mow you down at any moment. You can be killed by a train derailment. You could fall off your chair, never to rise again.

Life is filled with unending life-ending uncertainty. All the buzzing and pollen gathering, making all that wax and honey, being a good worker bee, doing your part for as long (or short) as you live.

Then, bangbangbangbang on and on for a 10 minute eternity. 50-odd people shot, 30-odd dead.

Some of the agitators demand weapons bans. Others demand weapons for students.

Was he high on drugs? Or low on pharmaceuticals?

Why did the school not lock down after the first assault?

Where were the police? Where was the killer. WHO was the killer? How could this happen?

"Chris, can you tell us what it was like in the classroom when the gunman came in and shot your German professor?"

The press demands answers. THE PEOPLE WANT TO KNOW!

But that's not true. The people don't want to know.

For as much pleasure as this nation seems to derive from bloody spectacle television, I really believe there comes a time when people don't want to hear about it anymore. When they stop reading, stop listening and start thinking.

All of the papers I will read tomorrow, the Times-Herald Record, the Poughkeepsie Journal, the Financial Times, the NY Times, and the Daily News will SCREAM the headline 31 DEAD as though it's the first time I will have heard that news.

But they will be carrying news I don't want to hear about anymore. I know everything I need to know right now, thanks.

Once I heard "man shoots 50, killing 31, self; constable blunders", anyway.

We all need a moment to pause and absorb the magnitude of what has happened, to create our own inner space for something as large as the knowledge that 62 parents will go to bed tonight having defied nature by living longer than their children. With no good reason in the world.

No news show will give taxonomy to the madness of this kind of killer. No news-reader will give insight worth seeing.

Hug your babies, and be grateful they're safe and well. Say a prayer for the families who aren't so lucky. Turn off the TV and go to bed.

It's been a bad week..

for Indian Point, anyway.

The explosion in the transformer yard across the street from the facility has caused IPs safety rating to be degraded from green to white. Not to mention it scared the crap out of a lot of people already on edge about Indian Point's safety.

Local Congressman John Hall, Westchester's County Executive Andy Spano and a host of other politicians renew their calls for independent safety assessments and for outright closure of the plant.

Noreen O'Donnell writes a common-sense piece in the Journal News, articulating the gut-level fear felt by most of the people who live in the shadow of that facility.

Leaks, shutdowns, terrorism, and now explosions. Scary stuff when you're talking nuke plant.

But we must realize that either choice - shutting down, or allowing re-licensing of IP - is not to be made lightly. A thousand good jobs, megawatts that would need replacing, huge impact on the local economy - these are all huge considerations. While the dangers of radioactivity weigh in as well. 

So here's what I'm effectively being asked to decide. Would I prefer cheap electricity from a life-threatening plant that could be minutes away from melting down? Or spiked unemployment, loss of millions of dollars in the local economy and a drastically higher electric bill - but I'm alive?

I'm a regular joe citizen of this area, I've lived my whole life within Indian Point's shadow, and that's the choice I'm being asked to make. And I do not know a thing about what distinguishes a safe nuclear facility from a dangerous one. But I still have to choose based on what little comprehensible information I have available to me.

Entergy and ren ask me to trust the tireless, wholesome, well intentioned scientists of Entergy and the NRC, the benevolent fire-keeping sorcerer-owners of Gaia's fire.

Riverkeeper and my local leaders call them dangerous, incompetent, venal liars who will let everyone rot so they can become ever richer.

So I sit here worrying about my choices, as cries are raised for an independent review of the plant.

It's absolutely true that nobody trusts the NRC, and on the other side, nobody who supports the plant will trust a study conducted by a team of Indian Point assassins.

And there's the more disturbing question: why does Entergy oppose an independent review of the facility? If there's nothing to hide, what are they hiding?

So here's what I think we should do. call on our government - and Entergy - to remove the politics from the equation, and let us take a real look at what's hot in Buchanan.

Hire a FOREIGN organization with NO vested interest in the outcome. Give them full authority to conduct a thorough and thoroughly independent study. Bring in scientists from another nuclear country like France, Germany or Norway to conduct this independent assessment, and make the conclusions a matter of public record. Keep it honest by making it contractual that none of the participants can work for Entergy or a related company at any time in the future. And if that is not honored, allow for severe, multi-million dollar fines. This shouldn't be much of an issue for say a German engineer. There's plenty of work for them in their own countries.

We are not capable of doing this on our own. IP can't get a fair trial in a local court, so let's change the venue, or at least the place the jury comes from.

Does anybody have any compelling reason why this is a bad idea?

If so, I'd love to hear it, and I'm sure the two or three other readers of this obscure message board would as well.

****Update****

John Hall will be holding a town meeting tomorrow evening at 7pm (Monday, April 9th) at the Howland Cultural Center on Main Street in Beacon. The subject will be - you guessed it - energy. I wonder if Vincent Ferro will be there. Just in case, I'll bring the "Excommunicate Rudy" signs - in case he forgot his.

Save the Farm!

The recent spate of mortgage foreclosures that have led to the "subprime crisis" is not good news for anybody. Sleazy mortgage lenders, promising something for nothing counted on the fact that as a nation, we are unconcerned with tomorrow, and crave instant gratification of our consumer "needs", and will agree to just about anything to get what we want RIGHT NOW! The future cost be damned.

Granted this was a collaborative effort, as "subprime" lenders worked hard to obscure the real cost of their product, and people chose to remain naive. Still, the bill inevitably comes due, and payback can be a bitch.

This crisis is a microcosm of a greater crisis we will have to deal with eventually:  when our debt to China comes due; when it comes time to pay for the wars we wage; when payment comes due for stupidly treating our planet like a sewer.

We are living on borrowed time (and money), as individuals, a nation and a species.

There's one component of this crisis that makes me believe the consequences of Fed-driven cheap and easy credit were a collaborative evil-plan by big business and government: the bankruptcy bill.

With no chance of absolution of debt, the poor, naive people who over-bought houses that were then foreclosed on (and sold for less than their bank note), will not have the option of bankruptcy relief. They will pay back every penny they borrowed, with interest. Many will be stuck making mortgage payments on properties they no longer own - for the rest of their lives. A new, congressionally mandated indentured servitude.

Fortunately, there may be hope for the thousands of Americans who find themselves unable to meet their obligations. So if you, or someone you know is in such a situation, send them the link to this excellent article by Terry Savage, contributing editor of Jim Cramer's thestreet.com.

Keeping Your Piece of the American Dream

It basically comes down to this: the banks would rather avoid foreclosure, because everyone loses, so they may be willing to work with you to find a solution. Savage offers a few things to try that are worth a shot.

And do yourself a favor and avoid variable rates whenever possible! Like gas prices, they have a tendency to going up a lot faster than they go down. Good Luck and Happy Easter!

Vincent Ferro

There's a local agitator named VIncent Ferro, who lately has been organizing anti-choice demonstrations in front of Catholic churches in Poughkeepsie and Newburgh. He and his fellow protesters are demanding that the Church formally deny Congressman John Hall the right to receive Holy Communion because of his support for legal abortion.

We're all entitled to our opinions, and the first amendment ensures Mr. Ferro's right to voice his.

And technically speaking, Mr Ferro has a case, I'd think. Even though Hall doens't practice Catholicism anymore - he attends services at an Episcopal church, as I recall.

So today, I would like to offer to join Mr. Ferro at his next protest. In fact, I will bring as many of my friends as will come, and we can raise the roof on those pro-abortion politicians!

There's one condition, though.

Mr. Ferro has to agree to add Rudy Giuliani to his protest.

I'm sure that won't be a problem. I'm sure Mr. Ferro is driven by principle, not partisanship, so including another protector-of-choice to his list will not pose a problem, right?

Then Mr. Ferro can kill two pro-choice birds with one stone!

Giuliani meets Ferro's criteria: he's runnng for president, he supports abortion - he's even been divorced! - and Newburgh and Poughkeepsie are both in Rudy's home Archdiocese.

So what do you say Mr. Ferro?

Willing to add Rudy G to your hit list? Or do you only go after Democrats whose election win still stings?